Although new owner Randy Miller denied awareness of any problems, the signs were there to read. The first came in Miller's piece introducing himself to the Doily's readers. "People have said we're the official voice of the Republic of Boulder," Miller wrote. Nobody in our hearing has ever used the euphemism "Republic of Boulder." It's "The People's Republic of Boulder," an epithet coined by Colorado's sourpuss Republican right, who eternally seethe in righteous resentment at the perks, quirks and hijinks of those pinkos, feminists, homos, those liberals in Boulder and the University of Colorado. And it was the "Colorado Daily Worker" that the wet blanket boys claimed was leading the charge.

Another sign of impending change was Miller's makeover of the Doily, including a new more dignified look and the proofreading of both stories and headlines (a development that will make Mondo Boulder's clippings page a whole lot more dull). The Doily's sprawling letters section, with its manifestos, rants and debates, where local peaceniks, greens and neo-Luddites once roamed free, was for awhile tamed and herded into a small area enclosing two or three polite missives a day, but it has been wisely enlarged to something more like its former state.

But the most serious warning sign came with the demotion of Pam White to managing editor, with Miller as owner-editor-publisher. It was a similar elevation of White over former Editor Clint Talbott that sent him fleeing to the arms of the Boulder Daily Camera. During the period the Doily was for sale, the employee-owners insisted (when they would even admit the paper was on the block) that "...the buyer would have to maintain the paper's character and ensure that the Daily's brand of editorial content wouldn't change."

By Fall (01) Miller had appointed Bronson Hilliard, a former Daily staffer, to the editorship, and the letters column had begun to assume some of its former luxuriance. There was even an overlong sermon or two from the progressive factory where they produce overlong sermons and maifestos. In the meantime, Boulder Weekly, which regularly ignores the university altogether, speculated in print that Hilliard's former PR work for the university was evidence that Miller was going to go soft on the rascals. And former Editor White penned first a cover story for the Weekly, and then began cropping up in occasional pieces.

Administering wake-up calls to the university's narcoleptic social conscience has been one of the Colorado Daily's traditional chores even before the paper stopped being student-run and became independent, and CU seems blessed with an endless supply of arrogant killjoys for regents, in loco parentis horribilis. Miller aims to be a lot kinder to the bureaucratic poohbahs who run the university, a distinct change from the White era's feet-to-the-fire approach. The Doily precipitated the resignation of CU's president with an aggressive series hinting at administrative and amatory improprieties. While President John Buechner, the CU Foundation and the regents angrily stonewalled, the Daily Camera tried to squelch the scandal by doing PR for the embattled principals and the other papers (remember the Boulder Planet?) in town politely looked the other way, the Doily launched a spunky little lawsuit to obtain records relevant to their investigation. In the end, the university's president bailed out and the paper's expose won it the Scripps Howard Foundation's 1999 Public Service Reporting Award for papers under a 100,000 circulation. Sweet irony! (The Camera's a Scripps Howard paper.) The Education Writers Association awarded the Doily a first in its annual awards for the series.

But there are also hints that the Miller Daily may be less promiscuous in touting the various health and spirituality quackeries that have flourished in White's Doily. That at least would be an improvement, but it still falls short of the tough-minded, critical-thinking paper that Boulderia needs (but probably doesn't want, anyway). At present, the new Daily seems to represent a shift toward professionalism and middle-of-the-roadism.

The Colorado Daily claims to be the most widely read paper in Boulder, and is distributed free throughout The Independent Republic of Greater Boulderia (the correct name for the former People's Republic of Boulder).

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